Moments of music bliss

It's a bit late for best-of-2010 lists, but so what? I made a list of the best live music shows I saw last year. Here they are in roughly chronological order:

Stars at the Mod Club
They still haven't surpassed Your Ex-Lover is Dead, and maybe they never will, but The Five Ghosts is their best album since, and they played it so beautifully. It's the give-and-take between Amy Millan and Torquil Campbell that makes this band stand above others, and the tunes of course.

Metz at the Garrison
These local geniuses can pummel the hell out of a rock song. Why aren't they huge? Perhaps they should put out an album instead of seven-inches—much as I love that format, it's not going to get them the attention they deserve. They're absolutely exhilarating live.

Pavement at Olympic Island
After unforgivably long lineups for beer and washrooms—and I'm never a fan of crowds + hot weather—this could so easily have been a waste of time. But Pavement was wonderful from start to finish. They didn't have new material, but it didn't matter with so many great songs. The icing on the cake was the moonlit ride back to the city in the QCYC boat.

Raul Malo at Hugh's Room
His voice makes your knees weak and your spine go all soft so you kind of collapse in your chair. He's so good, the words Roy Orbison and George Jones can be used in the same breath.

Teenage Fanclub at the Horseshoe
Three brilliant songwriters with seemingly endless beautiful melodies in them. They're aging but still writing and singing great songs. And they're Scottish. And one of them moved to Canada. What is not to love?

Nick Lowe at the Mod Club
First time playing with a band in years! The criminally underrated singer-songwriter played a bunch of his best songs—The Beast in Me, Cruel to be Kind, When I Write The Book, Heart of the City, there are so many!—with the kind of backing band that is so understated because they're so damn good. Why Ron Sexsmith came on stage and left without doing anything was a mystery, but Nick rules. On what would have been my late best friend's 50th birthday, and I barely shed a tear. Time heals, slowly.

Jim Bryson & the Weakerthans at the Horseshoe
Jim is an awesomely talented singer-songwriter who never gets the attention he deserves. That's said so often it's like a broken record. But it was a smart move to make a record backed by the Weakerthans, who seem to have reined in some of Jim's meandering tendencies and provided a solid backing for his songs and a steady balance for his onstage persona. Finally.

Lightning Bolt at the Great Hall
OK, there I was standing in the middle of the floor, transfixed by the unbelievably intense two-man assault. It was an experience of music as a physiological response more than an emotional one. I thought to myself, this is crazy, this is so intense, I am feeling this shaking my entire body, am I really enjoying this? I'm still not sure if it was pleasure exactly, but it was something remarkable. Also, afterward it was great to freak a young guy out that an old bag like me had enjoyed Lightning Bolt.

Chris Dignan at Lulu Lounge
This freaking ageless young man evoked the ghost of the great Suckerpunch—which he fronted, what, 15 years ago?—with a swinging garagey-surf rock show led by his guitar and voice.

Lowest of the Low at Lee's Palace
There's a lot of 90s nostalgia on this list, but these guys actually reformed to play their freshly reissued 1990 debut album, Shakespeare My Butt, which hit a massive nerve with a whole generation of people. It must be frustrating to have not managed to hit that nerve again, or at least not so successfully, but those songs really are perfect shots to the heart, able to evoke a time and a place with impressive clarity. And they play them beautifully.

St. Simon's Choir at St. Simon's Church
Every year this choir blows me away with their exquisite harmonies, blasting through the church and through my body without benefit of microphone or amplifier, and for free. It's something I take for granted, since it's always been there. I hope it always will be.

The ghosts and Christine Fellows

I love the way Christine Fellows doesn't follow the rules and structures of pop music. On her new album, Femmes de chez nous, there's a song in completely free time. She only realized that when she tried to add some overdubs to her vocal and piano tracks and was told it would be impossible.
I marvel at her ability to do what sounds right to her despite the conventions of music. I had a wonderful interview with her and only wish I could have had more than 350 words to write about her album and the DVD of the live performances she did as part of her artist-in-residency program at the Musee de St-Boniface Museum in Winnipeg. It was inspired by the story of four nuns who travelled from Montreal to Winnipeg by canoe in 1844. It took months, and when they arrived, in the middle of the night, people could hear them singing as they came down the river.
I mean almost anybody could be inspired by that, but Fellows made a beautiful album about Franco-Manitoban culture out of it. And though she's not religious, she said that a series of weird things happened to her when she was finishing the project—a hard drive crash that forced her to re-record some of it, some funding that was promised but didn't come through, things breaking down and getting lost. The film editor told her that the nuns weren't finished with her yet, and she had to go back to the museum. So she did, and she said she “may or may not” have hidden some sort of offerings to appease the ghosts. Whatever she did, it worked.

Return of the Jayhawks

The Jayhawks took a while to get going last night. Or maybe I did, because it was so weird to be at a show and not drinking.
Is it so wrong that virtually every concert-going experience I've had has been influenced by alcohol? Perhaps, perhaps not, but one thing's for sure: a drink or two does help dull the irritation caused by standing in a packed, hot room, being regularly knocked around by people pushing past you and deciding to stand right in front of you. The band's job is to lift you past that irritation, and eventually they did.
I still think it's all about Gary Louris, he's a better guitar player, and his voice is really the essence of their sound. Plus his songs, of course. The best ones are all his, as I discovered years ago when he did a solo show at the Horseshoe and sang them all. Still, they have some lovely harmonies and I liked the keyboard player. No self-consciousness, no attitude, no turning their backs on the audience or hiding behind their fabulous haircuts—just letting the songs stand on their own. God, I love unfashionable bands!

Blood and Feathers

I guess I can see how some people found Black Swan too over the top... it was outrageous, but I completely and utterly enjoyed the ride. It's kind of like a female version of Fight Club—something that delves into and picks apart (sometimes literally... ouch) our ideas of femininity the way Fight Club poked around in mens' psyches. Ballet is pretty much the perfect vehicle for it, since it's where women have to starve themselves, torture their bodies and never get old in order to succeed. And that's not even counting the nasty and psychotic storylines most classical ballets have.
I loved the way Darren Aronofsky borrowed from Polanski, Cronenberg and Hitchcock, loved all the mirrors and the creepy subway tunnels and the scary bunnies and the way the faces switched back and forth. Awesome, and Natalie Portman deserves the Oscar which she will presumably get.

Space Odyssey

I hadn't seen 2001: A Space Odyssey in 25 years, which is kind of mind-boggling. The first time was at the University Theatre, the mindless destruction of which still irks me. It was a beautiful theatre with 70mm capability, and I remember being blown away by the spaceship rotating to The Blue Danube and the crazy psychedelic rush of the trip to god knows where. I also remember being horrified by people watching it on TV a few years later. That is just wrong.
This time I went to the TIFF Lightbox, which is showing a 70mm print of 2001 in its almost frighteningly soundproof theatre. And it's still amazing. What I loved the most: the art direction—the prescient snappy retro-futuristic look of the space station, the freaky modern-classical house where Keir Dullea clinks his cutlery and ages, the rolling Escher-like spaceship, the little bars that have to be keyed one by one to shut down HAL—the music, both Strausses; HAL, of course; and yes, that intensely colourful hallucinogenic trip. I also love how I still have no idea what it all REALLY MEANS. But virtually every sci fi movie owes it a huge debt.

Legislative behaviour

My name was read out in the Ontario Legislature on Monday, though hardly anyone was paying attention. My grandfather, Wilfrid Heighington, was an MPP from 1929 to 1937, as well as a writer and lawyer, and he was being honoured by the Legislature with a brief mention of his life and work. My cousin arranged it as a birthday treat for her father, and a bunch of us got to sit in a special gallery and watch. It was pretty interesting to be there, but the overall impression was one of petty boorishness. None of the MPPs listened to anything anyone else was saying, even the members of their own party. They sat there, chatting and laughing—when they weren't yelling like a bunch of bratty teens. You've got to wonder why they take schoolkids there to watch; what a lesson they get in debating. Heckle, yell, laugh, yell louder, repeat. But yay Wilfrid, wish I'd known you. Afterward, I touched the letters of his name, which are carved in the hallway along with every other MPP's.

singalong Shakespeare

So ’90s week started with Chris Dignan reanimating the shimmering ghost of Suckerpunch at Lula Lounge, continued with my discovery of No Joy, a band from Montreal who sound like shoegazers (and are really good) and wrapped up with the Lowest of the Low playing Shakespeare My Butt start to finish in a packed-beyond-belief Lee's Palace. I had to move around the club a couple of times, first because a bunch of yahoos muscled into our sweet side-of-the-stage spot (there is an inordinate number of large men among Low fans), then because another fan was screaming every lyric in my right ear, then because I got stuck behind another member of the solidly built fan base. It was worth it, though. They were great, and everyone looked as though they were having fun up there. Jim Bryson and John K. Samson were so good together that they almost stole the show. And then today I was going through old CDs and got washed over with more ’90s nostalgia. The Feelies! Buffalo Tom! Slow Loris! Rusty! Hardship Post! Sianspheric! I've still got way too many CDs but at least I can walk into the closet now.